The Making of the Mandala

It all started with some mindfulness colouring in one quiet, calm afternoon. We discussed making our own cushions to lie on for our Smiling Minds meditation sessions. 

"What if we write an inspirational quote on them?" suggested one student. So we designed our quote, font and began planning a stencil. The problem was the quote was going to prove too difficult to cut out from our contact stencil. "Why don't we design our own mandala?" I asked the frustrated students.So we did...

Mandalas are very bright and colourful and have rotational symmetry, so we set about creating our own personal design. The process started with a pencil sketch and then we transferred to contact by tracing it through the window. 

The next step, we all got creative! Out came the sponges, rollers and paintbrushes to create the colourful masterpieces. It was so much fun to play with paint and experiment with blending and marbling to create the desired look. 

Great idea painting the design on the sponge!

Peeling off the contact was exciting- revealing our mandalas in their finished state.

How were we going to make these into cushions you might ask? Sewing machines of course! 

We headed north to Joseph Banks Secondary College, on the bus, to utilise one of their awesome Home Economics Textiles rooms. Miss Williamson was on board with her trusted helpers, including Year 9 and 10 students. I was proud of the conduct and concentration of LA8 as they 'cottoned on' to sewing really quickly. In no time they had mastered the machine and whipped around the hemline to make one Mandala cushion!

It was a treat to head up to the high school and perhaps ease some early transition nerves as well as complete a project we had been working on for some time. LA8 are very grateful to the team at Joseph Banks for making this excursion happen.  The students have taken their finished cushions home to stuff and hand sew all ready for meditation in Term 3. Until the next time we get arty it's paper, scissors.....

Only dead fish go with the flow....

Hellloooooo... is this thing on! Yes, I know it's been a while since our last blog post. We've still been doing great things - we just haven't been letting you know about it!

I recently shared this quote with the students:

It's so much easier in school, in life to just go with the flow- trends, behaviours, learning...  It's challenging to go outside your comfort zone, to do something different to others especially when you're 11! I encourage this "outside the square" thinking... it's only when we go outside our comfort zone that we experience new and wonderful things and realise a potential we may never have known existed. 

The students have been sinking their teeth into descriptive writing, taking risks with new vocabulary, unusual sentence starters and character development. Their narratives are proving to be engaging and entertaining as I read them aloud to the class. There could be some future authors in this class!

I asked an LA8 writer to put himself out of his comfort zone and write a guest blog post. 
"Cool!" he replied. "What should I write about?" he questioned. 
"I want some honesty," I replied, "don't just tell us what you think we want to hear. I would like your honest feedback about Yoga and Mindfulness activities in LA8. Do you think we should do them? Do you think they help? I've asked you SD because I feel you will be honest."

Without hesitation SD hopped onto the computer and moments later we had this.... his first guest blog post.....

I feel that yoga helps us with our posture and gives us an extra boost of confidence when we really need it. It has been beneficial for us with sport and we have got more advanced in yoga. Mindfulness has been helping us with concentrating and code switching. We are always more focused after mindfulness and we produce better work as well.

We have something special because we are the only class who does yoga, but most do mindfulness and they all say it helps every single minute afterwards. Every day when we do yoga we get better at it. I think we need to spread it though all schools and you should try it to!

So what are you waiting for? Until next time it's paper, scissors....